Dreamlands by Scott Jäeger Page A

more than a pirate.”
    The
old man’s comment hung in the air between us, and when he made no move to
retract it I moved to the door, my hand comfortably close to my dagger.  Isobel
followed me to the street.  We walked down the block from their window before
stopping to speak.
    “I’m
so sorry, Isaac.  He loves you like a son, he told me so himself before this temper
took hold of him.
    “I’m
sure you are right, my dear, but there is no use arguing with him now.”  I took
her hands in mine.  In her agitation, she had scratched one of them, drawing
blood.  
    “This
madness must pass,” she said.  It was more plea than avowal.
    “I
must get back to the poisoned man.  I don’t know what I can do except watch,
but I must do that at least.”
    Even
by New England standards our courtship had been remarkably chaste, but on that
inauspicious occasion we enjoyed our first passionate kiss, as fumbling and
embarrassed as children.
    "I'll
come by with some broth when I can," she said.
    I hid
the depth of my disquiet until we had parted. 
    * * *
    The
next days saw the fallen man’s fever advance and recede without pattern or surcease,
and watching over him was all the distraction I could ask from my other
concerns.  I washed his face, cleaned the wounds, and got water down him when I
could.  After getting a saucer-sized bruise on my ribs, I learned to stay away
from his good arm, which would lash out unpredictably in the midst of his
delusions.  To pass the time, I told snippets of my uncle’s stories, then
fairytales remembered from childhood, and lastly, fighting my own fatigue, nonsense
yarns I spun on the spot.
    Returning
from an errand one afternoon, I saw that he slept peacefully.  The wounded arm
was flexible again and, aside from an ugly spray of dime-sized scars, apparently
no worse off.
    With
that burden relieved, I noticed my knife, which I had been whetting earlier,
had gone missing when I was out.  It took but a few minutes to search my room,
and less time to figure out who was responsible.  Having established the dwarf
wasn’t stupid enough to be waiting in his apartment, I belted on my cutlass and
made for High Street.  My neighbour was an inveterate gambler, and the joke of High
Street was that it housed the broadest range of low enterprises in Zij. 
    I
found the thief in the first house of chance I came to, sitting with five
others at a scarred and unsteady table.  The pearl-handled dagger sat like a
queen atop the pot, mostly of copper and silver pieces, with a couple of rings
thrown in.  The dwarf affected not to see me until I rested my hand on the
empty sheath at my belt.
    “Ye
should have taken my offer when I was flush,” he growled in a voice like a mill
grinding corn.  The hatchet was hooked on the table near his elbow.  “That
bauble is fair trade for the lump you gave me.”
    “That
fancy dagger is in the game,” said a one-eyed man, not looking up from his
cards.  “Come back when we're done and you can barter for it with the winner.” 
He paused, and I realized the hall had gone silent and watchful.  "Or stay
and get gutted.”
    I
leaned forward to place my hand on the knife.  The odds looked foul, but they
all sat while I stood, and I had my cutlass should any bluffs need answered.  But
I did not anticipate the man who crept up behind me.  A single warped board underfoot
betrayed his approach.  He would nevertheless have had me, if the black man hadn't
been quieter yet.  He dispatched the backstabber with his staff, leaving a
stiletto vibrating point down in the floor, and stood by my side, toothily grinning
at the table of gamblers.
    At
sight of him, voices raised in protest were hushed, the scraping of chair legs
stopped, and hands which had gripped weapons returned eagerly to their cards.  I
sheathed my knife, giving the mad dwarf one last look.  His lips bled where he gnashed
at his black beard, but said no more.
    * * *
    The
fighting man’s name was